6/27/2002 - IONA®, a leading e-Business Platform provider for Web Services Integration (NASDAQ: IONA), announced a global alliance with UDEX, the provider of data normalization services for leading companies in the global Consumer Packaged Goods (CPG) and Retail industry. Normalized data means that the content of suppliers' data is harmonized to produce a complete, structured and commonly coded product description. The UDEX and IONA alliance will ease the integration, aggregation, organization and distribution of normalized product data for customers throughout the CPG / Retail industry.

Today, there is increasing demand for the ability to monitor both the physical progress of products through the supply chain, and to integrate the resulting information flows into a single central database, for marketing, financial, production and logistics purposes across the Retail and CPG industries. UDEX's product data normalization services give manufacturers responsibility for describing their products and retailers the ability to identify a supplier's product variants, as physical product in the supply chain and as an element of data in a database. UDEX's services, utilized in combination with IONA's Orbix E2ATM Web Services Integration Platform, will allow retailers to integrate this product data and supply-chain progress between backend ERPs, mainframes and databases with retail stores, electronic marketplaces, and UCCNet - helping them realize significant gains in operational efficiency and return-on-investment.

As part of the alliance, UDEX and IONA will cooperate to identify and close mutually beneficial business opportunities in the CPG / Retail market for UDEX's product data normalization services and IONA's Orbix E2A Web Services Integration Platform.

"The ability of retailers, manufacturers and suppliers to quickly and accurately exchange data is dependent both on application integration within their own enterprise and the ability to understand the content of the data," said John Denning, President UDEX America. "IONA's Orbix E2A Web Services Integration Platform offers an open, standards-based solution for connecting enterprise business systems, and through our alliance with IONA, we can help enterprises in the CPG / Retail industries improve category management and better measure their competitive position."

"Consumer Packaged Goods and Retail is a low-margin business where there are enormous benefits to be had from integrating and automating business processes," said Bob Sandie, vice president of global alliances at IONA. "As a result of our alliance, IONA and UDEX will help retailers, manufacturers, and suppliers shave the dollars off their costs that will result in immediate bottom-line results."

The Orbix E2A Web Services Integration Platform, announced in November 2001, is a complete enterprise-class business-to-business and enterprise application integration solution. The first 100% standards-based, services-oriented Web Services Integration platform, IONA Orbix E2A provides the tools and the management services required for reliable, scalable, and secure dynamic data exchange, business process automation, and composite applications. The Orbix E2A Web Services Integration Platform is available in three editions: XMLBus, Partner and Collaborate.

About UDEX
UDEX (which stands for Universal Descriptor Exchange) is a limited company established in 1997.

The company was set up to provide a set of tools and services that allows manufacturers to harmonize the content of their product data and make it available to all their trading partners and other third parties. This means that all of a company's product information, across all of their products, can be described in the same way. This service is called 'data normalization'. Normalized data is different from data standards as it focuses on the data content rather than the data structure. The output from data normalization is a global masterfile of complete, structured, commonly coded product descriptions (and their associated UCC or EAN barcodes). This masterfile is available for use throughout the supply chain and in market and media measurement, finally making it possible to remove much of the confusion surrounding product identification that participants in these activities encounter in their daily working life.

UDEX is independent and non-partial and makes its product descriptions available to any reputable organization on a consistent commercial basis. The biggest single investor and shareholder in UDEX is 3i plc, Europe's leading venture capital company. UDEX has no 'trade' investors and hence no conflict of interest. For additional information about UDEX Ltd., visit our Website at http://www.udex.com

About IONA
IONA is the leading e-Business Platform provider for Web Services Integration with more than 4,500 customers worldwide. IONA Orbix E2ATM, which consists of the award-winning Orbix E2A Web Services Integration Platform and Orbix E2A Application Server Platform, enables the flow of information across disparate systems and the liberation of application assets for new business opportunities.

Founded in 1991, IONA® (NASDAQ: IONA) is headquartered in Dublin, Ireland, with U.S. headquarters in Waltham, Massachusetts. The company had revenues of $181 million in 2001 and employs more than 800 people in more than 30 offices worldwide. For additional information about IONA, visit our Website at http://www.iona.com

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